Category: captions, sketch comedy

Domestic Labor and Pandemic

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in age, captions, sketch comedy, civic culture, civics, cute, cuteness, design, domestic, domestic labor, ethos, family, feminism, media, pandemic, parenting, professional writing, professionalism, psychology, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, sexual politics, Social Media, space, space & spatiality, spatial justice, spatial rhetorics

Welcome to the brave new world of cleaning up after yourself and no longer burdening black women with the unpaid labor and invisible upkeep of taking care of your personal hygiene and sanitation. Get used to cleaning up after your own damn self because we’re all nursemaids now. 

Neither race, gender, class, nor your professional status will protect you from having to pitch in and handle your share of the dirty work. Wipe down that counter and polish away those smears. Not only will your work be invisible, but you’ll have to try and look good while performing it since, now, your life probably depends on it. It’s only what black women have been doing for free for the last four centuries.

So hop to it! There’s plenty of unseen, undervalued work for everybody to do. 



	

		
	



	
	

		
Thanks, Cs! 
				

			 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, Breaking Bad, captions, sketch comedy, cinema, communication, communication, persuasion, politics, teaching, professional writing, conventions, digital literacy, education, film, multimodal, rhetorics, spatial rhetorics, technology, TV, video, visual literacy, White Studies, whiteness studies, writing		
			

	

		
postracial hauntings book coverRhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education (2017)—features the chapter, “Color Deafness: White Writing as Palimpsest for African American in Breaking Bad Screen Captioning and Video Technologies English” coauthored by Nicole E. Snell and yours truly—won the 2018 Conference on College Composition & Communication Outstanding Book Award in the Edited Collection category. This award would not have been possible without the steadfast commitment and encouragement of the collection’s editors: Tammie M. Kennedy, Joyce Irene Middleton, and Krista Ratcliffe.


This Southern Illinois University Press publication is made all the more special by the esteemed list of fellow constributors: Sarah E. Austin, Lee Bebout, Jennifer Beech, Cedric Burrows, Leda Cooks, Sharon Crowley, Anita M. DeRouen, Tim Engles, Christine Farris, Amy Goodburn, M. Shane Grant, Gregory Jay, Ronald A. Kuykendall, Kristi McDuffie, Alice McIntyre, Peter McLaren, Keith D. Miller, Lilia D. Monzó, Casie Moreland, Ersula Ore, Annette Harris Powell, Catherine Prendergast, Meagan Rodgers, Jennifer Seibel Trainor, Victor Villanueva, and Hui Wu.


The award ceremony takes place next week during the CCCC National Convention in Kansas City. 

	

		
	



	
	

		
AAE, Actually: Black English as Literal Gag
				

			 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in captions, sketch comedy, civic culture, civics, elections, electoral politics, gender, political campaign, politics, rhetorics, TV, visual literacy, White Studies		
			

	

		
SNL poked a little fun at the recent 2016 presidential election. It’s a digital video short—a parodic take on the iconic note card scene from the classic rom-com Love, Actually.




All the big punchlines are about Hillary putting in some overtime for the holidays. Hillary’s making the rounds with a particularly persuasive cache of giant note cards, to cajole white female delegates into changing their minds and casting their electoral college votes for her instead of Trump. The note cards’ captioned Black English is a clever comedic prop, a literal gag where she’s not allowed to speak. Rather, she must soldier on, quietly and supportively. You know, the way a nice lady is supposed to behave.


And poor ol’ Hills… overachieving as always, giving it her all and trying to keep it “cute and on mute” in her last-ditch effort to win over just enough faithless electors to reverse Trump’s victory.


A girl can dream, can’t she?


Watch what happens at 1:06-1:11; 1:39-1:43; 2:18-2:28. Check out the discursive leveler, zero copula, final consonant reductions, and number concord inversion… But as we know, and the post-election data clearly indicates, the real gag is in the silent majority of white voters who chose a pussy-grabbing sexual predator over a competent and seasoned stateswoman who was—quite arguably—the most qualified presidential candidate in modern US history.


Chapter 15 of this book can tell you more.


postracial hauntings book cover